We open with a kaiju-sized kitsune, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, attacking the Hidden Leaf Village, stopped by one of the village's leader-ninja who rode to battle upon a giant demon toad. I am enthralled already! He did the only natural thing and bound the kitsune's spirit into an orphan, our titular character. Nothing about his parents, which leads me to believe one or both died fighting the kitsune, or possibly WERE the kitsune. Not the case, as I later found out, but fun to speculate on.
Having a demon fox taking up residence in your soul has apparently made Naruto as welcome in the village about as much as a sausage burp, so naturally he acts out and becomes the shinobi version of Dennis the Mennis, for openers defacing the shinobi version of Mount Rushmore that looms over the village. We meet our only other named characters so far, Sakura and Sasuke! They will not be significant later. According to some, I'm actually half right.
Naruto, at the same time seemingly not letting the villagers extreme distaste for him get him down also desperately wants their acceptance, so desires to become ninja president, or Hokage. To do this, Naruto needs to graduate by passing his ninja magic class, and naturally flunks out horribly. Lots of people do graduate save Naruto, who is really in danger of becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of ninjas. He doesn't recognize his father slash teacher figure Iruka's tough love approach, and falls prey to Mizuki's prodding to get him to steal a scroll possessing all the really cool ninja magic.
Naruto easily learns what is probably a really, really advanced ninja magic, and it turns out his boosting the scroll is all a stunt by Mizuki to grab the scroll for himself. Mizuki is a sneaky bastard with some throwing knives, but that's nothing compared to trying to drive a wedge between Naruto and the only man in the village to literally give half a crap about him, especially after Iruka takes a Yuffie-sized shuriken from Mizuki in back.
Mizuki thinks Naruto, if given his druthers, would become a power-mad prick like he would. Iruka goes to bat for him in a nice moment, and it's up to Naruto to save the day with the jutsu he just learned. After all that, how could you not give him a cool headband? I wonder what happens to Mizuki. Despite the goofiness, it IS a village of ninja, who aren't known as history's more compassionate assassins.
All in all, fine start.
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